


why the caged bird sings

by ednae



Category: Tales of Berseria, Tales of Series
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-04 00:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13352658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ednae/pseuds/ednae
Summary: Now that Laphicet is fifteen, Velvet supposes it’s all right to start off on a journey with him.  He’s been healthy and strong for months, after all.  "If I can do anything to help you achieve your dream, I will," she says.Her brother’s eyes become glassy all of a sudden, and he chews at his bottom lip as he looks at her.  “I love you.”“I love you too, Laphi.”





	why the caged bird sings

**Author's Note:**

> this game hurt me so much

“Laphi!  Dinner’s getting cold!”

It’s a lie, of course.  The stew is piping hot and steaming, filling the kitchen with a savory aroma.  But nevertheless, it convinces Laphicet to emerge from his room, mouth drawn into a frown.  His book is still tightly held against his chest, but at least he’s here.  That’s all that matters.

Velvet sets a bowl on the table as Laphicet sits down, setting the book beside the food.  The cover is old and worn, but Velvet only vaguely recognizes it.

“Is that one of Arthur’s?” she asks as she sits down across from him.  She reaches for it, ignoring Laphi’s weak protests.  She only has to flip through a couple pages before she accepts that she can’t understand a single thing this book is saying, and she gives up with a shake of her head.  Laphicet snatches the book back as soon as she takes her hands off it.

“He let me borrow it the other day, before he left with Celica,” he explains, opening it up to some page in the middle.  Words in a script Velvet has never seen dance along the pages, other scripts and languages filling the margins with notes.  Laphicet goes quiet as he focuses on the writing.

“Well,” Velvet says, slapping her hand down onto the page to obscure his view, “that can wait until after dinner.  I want to actually talk with you.  I don’t think I’ve seen you all day.”

Laphi sighs, but it’s good-natured.  He smiles and settles back in his chair, taking a spoon to his lips.  “I went to the cape again today, but I think we should head to Taliesin soon.  There’s only so much I can learn about those ruins.”

“We’ll have to get a ship,” Velvet muses, bringing a hand to her chin.  Now that Laphicet is fifteen, she supposes it’s all right to start off on a journey with him.  He’s been healthy and strong for months, after all.  “We’ll have to ask Arthur about it.”

“Maybe they can come with us!” Laphicet exclaims.  “Arthur knows more about the Ancient Tongue than I do, anyway.  All of these notes are his.”  He gestures back down to the book.

Velvet giggles.  “I’d be useless.  I can’t read any of that.”

Laphicet grins.  “I could teach you, if you want.”

“Well, we _will_ be on the ship for a while without anything to do…”  She smiles back at him as she slurps another spoonful of stew.  The warmth of the broth spreads throughout her body, and the chunks of prickleboar meat are tangy on her tongue as she chews.

“Then I will!  You’ll be fluent in no time,” Laphicet declares, so sure of himself.  Velvet has no doubt in his skills as a teacher, but she can’t trust in her strength as a student.  Laphi has a long road ahead of him if he really intends on teaching her anything.

“I’ll do my best,” she says with a nod.

There’s a pause where they’re both just eating dinner silently, Laphicet glancing over the open book beside him, until he sets his spoon down in the bowl and looks at his sister warily.  “You’re serious, right?  About the journey?”

She cocks her head to the side, taken aback by the sudden hesitation.  But she smiles warmly and sincerely, feeling love and adoration bloom in her chest.  “Yeah, I am.  We’ll talk to Arthur about it when he gets back.  But you’re in charge of planning the routes, you know.”

Laphicet’s eyes go wide, and then a big grin splits his face.  He looks like he wants to launch himself across the table at her, but he stays firmly in place, even while he bounces in his seat.  “Thank you, Velvet!”

“It’s your dream,” she says by way of brushing off the gratitude.  “If I can do anything to help you achieve that, I will.”

Laphi’s eyes become glassy all of a sudden, and he chews at his bottom lip as he looks at her.  “I love you.”

“I love you too, Laphi.”

They finish their dinner quickly, and Velvet returns to the kitchen to handle the leftovers.  Laphicet is still sitting at the table, his elbows on the table as he pores over the book in front of him.  Something inside Velvet wants to be able to read it, too, to connect on a deeper level with her brother in a way she can’t possibly with her limited knowledge of the world and history.  As she scrubs at the pot, she finds herself looking forward to the long days on the ship when Laphicet will teach her the Ancient Tongue.

“Ancient Avarost is so hard to read,” Laphi grumbles under his breath.  Velvet hums a question, so he continues.  “It’s based around intent, so you have to know what the author was feeling in order to interpret anything.  I don’t know how Arthur can read this stuff.”

“He sure is something, all right,” Velvet says, and Laphicet sighs.  “But so are you.  You’re so smart, and you can figure anything out if you set your mind to it.”

Laphicet perks up at that, quirking a smile from across the room.  He doesn’t say anything in return, but he begins reading again, mumbling words in a foreign language so quickly and fluidly that Velvet is nearly blown away.

He really is something.

Then he furrows his brow and leans in close, inspecting a passage.  Velvet sets down the cleaned pot and makes her way across the room, leaning over as if she believes she can help him read it.

He pushes the book away and leans back in his chair, looking up at Velvet hovering over him.

“Hey, Velvet?” he asks, and she can’t seem to place his tone of voice.  It has an odd quality to it: quiet, wondering, serious, hesitant, all at once.

“Hm?”

“Why is it, you think, that birds fly?”

Laphicet’s mouth moves to form the words, but it’s no longer his voice.  It’s deeper and all-encompassing, echoing around Velvet.

It’s Arthur’s voice, she realizes with a start.

No—not Arthur.  Artorius.

Velvet stumbles back as Laphicet’s eyes go dead and unfocused, harsh and uncaring.  His smile disappears.  He turns away when Velvet bumps into the wall behind her.

“What are you—?” she chokes out, but she’s cut off by the colors bleeding away, the walls disappearing.  Her home dissolves into nothingness, replaced by blinding white, so bright she can barely make out anything else around her.

Anything, that is, except for the two figures standing before her.

It’s Laphicet—no.  It’s Innominat.  Blond hair wild with wispy tendrils floating freely.  Dead eyes.  A frown that seems so out of place on such a familiar face.

Next to him stands Artorius, his jaw set.  His right arm is bound tightly to his chest, his left clenched firmly around his sword.  His hair blows gently in a breeze that doesn’t exist.

“Why is it,” he repeats, and Innominat mirrors the words in Laphicet’s voice, “that birds fly?”

At Velvet’s side, her arm has become a pulsing mass of red flesh, stained bloody from all the victims she has killed.  It seems to move of its own volition, writhing and jerking forward as if to strike out at her brothers, her family.

It feels separate from her, but when she forms a fist with her hand, the red claws obey and dig into the fleshy palm.

She can’t feel the pain, but she screams anyway.

“You did this,” she whispers, a stark contrast to her outburst.  She doesn’t look up, but she knows Artorius has heard her.

He clicks his tongue, as if simply reprimanding her.  “And I thought you were so bright.”

A fire flares up inside her, threatening to burst if she doesn’t douse the flames immediately.  She yells again and lunges forward, claws outstretched and ready to strike.

Artorius dodges easily.  His somber expression doesn’t change.

“You did this!” Velvet shouts, swiping her hand through the air again.  “You made me this way!”

“You always let your emotions get the better of you.”  Artorius and Innominat speak in tandem, taunting her even as she fills with rage and desperation, lashing out and moving forward in a futile dance.

“We’ll fix that,” Innominat says, but Velvet pays no attention to him.  She can’t.

Artorius keeps his sword at his side, nimbly ducking out of the way of every attack.

“ _I hate you!_ ”  It rips out of her throat as a screech that terrifies her, but both Artorius and Innominat seem wholly unimpressed.

She stops, her hand poised to strike down.  She’s frozen as she watches Artorius, his dead eyes unamused at the spectacle she’s made of herself.  All around them in white, bathing him in something holy and good.  Behind her, she imagines Innominat looks the same way.

Around her, she sees malevolence.  It’s burning dark and deep, black specks floating off her in waves that almost resemble tentacles encircling her legs, her waist, her neck, pulling tighter and tighter, seeping into her even as it radiates outward.

She sinks to the ground, her daemon hand limp at her side.  Artorius stands before her, unmoving, unwavering, just as always.  Innominat returns to him, but she doesn’t look up to see anything more than his feet hovering a few inches above Artorius’s.

“I’m…”  Velvet closes her eyes to keep the tears from falling, and when she opens them again, she’s in a room at an inn.  It’s dark, with the only light coming from the moon outside the window.  Yet the memory of the white burns brightly in her mind.

She glances at her arm.  It’s pulsing and daemonic, and she flexes her clawed fingers to test if it’s real.  When it returns to its bandaged form resembling something human, a painful reminder of what used to be and what never will be again, she turns over in the bed and buries her face into her pillow.

“...A monster.”


End file.
